A stent is an elongated device used to support an intraluminal wall. A stent may be used, for example, to support a vessel or to treat a vascular aneurysm by removing the pressure on a weakened part of an artery so as to reduce the risk of rupture. Typically, a stent is implanted in a blood vessel at the site of a stenosis or aneurysm endoluminally, i.e. by so-called “minimally invasive techniques” in which the stent in a radially compressed configuration is delivered by a deployment system or “introducer” to the site where it is required. The introducer may enter the body through the patient's skin, or by a “cut down” technique in which the entry blood vessel is exposed by minor surgical means. When the introducer has been threaded into the body lumen to the prosthesis deployment location, the introducer is manipulated to cause the stent to be deployed and the stent allowed to expand or caused to expand at the deployment location, and the introducer is withdrawn. Stent expansion may be effected by a variety of mechanisms, including spring elasticity, balloon expansion, or by the self-expansion of a thermally or stress-induced return of a memory material to a pre-conditioned expanded configuration.
In the case of a self-expanding stent, the stent will generally self-expand to a full deployment diameter upon retraction of a constraining sheath. Thus, a self-expanding stent is desirably placed precisely at the intended deployment location as the sheath is retracted. Further, because resheathing is generally necessary for repositioning of a self-expanding stent, self-expanding stents generally utilize a closed-cell design, rather than an open cell design, to facilitate resheathing.
It would be desirable for a self-expanding stent to be repositionable within a bodily lumen after an initial partial self-expansion has been achieved.
It would be desirable to provide a resheathable self-expanding stent of open-cell design.
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Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief summary of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the summarized embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided as well only for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. 1.72. The abstract is not intended to be used for interpreting the scope of the claims.